What caused a hotel fire in a Turkish ski resort?

The fire that killed at least 76 people at the Grand Kartal hotel in the early hours of Monday is one of the deadliest disasters of its kind in Turkish history.

Some survivors said they did not hear an alarm and experts told the BBC they would not have expected such a high death toll in a hotel where fire protection systems were working properly.

The 12-story hotel in Turkey’s popular Kartalkaya ski resort welcomes tens of thousands of visitors each year, so it is understandable that Turks want to know how such a terrible tragedy could have happened at the start of a two-year school holiday. weeks.

The interior minister said the fire started at 03:27 (00:27 GMT) in the restaurant area on the fourth floor and firefighters arrived within 45 minutes.

Some survivors have described smelling smoke up to an hour earlier.

Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy stated that the hotel had a fire competency certificate “issued by the fire department.”

But this was questioned by local mayor Tanju Ozcan, who said the fire department had not issued a positive report since 2007.

Some survivors say they did not hear any alarms, while there have been reports of inadequacies in the hotel’s fire suppression systems.

“My wife smelled the fire,” said Atakan Yelkovan, who said he was staying on the third floor of the hotel.

“We went down before the others. The alarm didn’t sound… It took between an hour and an hour and a half for the firefighters to arrive. Meanwhile, the fourth and fifth floors were burning. People on the upper floors were screaming.”

Some guests on the upper floors tried to escape with their bedding and others jumped to their deaths.

Eylem Senturk said the fire alarm didn’t go off until she left the building. Her husband had to jump off the hotel porch because of the smoke: “We are very lucky to have survived.”

The BBC has attempted to contact hotel management regarding these allegations but has so far received no response.

Nine people, including the hotel owner, have been detained as part of the Turkish investigation.

Hotel managers have issued a statement saying they regret the losses and are cooperating fully with authorities.

In such a large building where fire systems are fully operational, experts say fire detectors are expected to respond to a fire within seconds and send an alert to the fire control board.

“In a good business, there should be someone in charge of this panel 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Kazim Beceren, president of the Turkish Fire Protection and Education Foundation, told the BBC.

The death toll is also extremely high, raising more questions.

“There will always be fires, but we wouldn’t expect so many people to die in these types of buildings,” said Professor Sevket Ozgur Atayilmaz, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Yildiz Technical University, who has worked on fire safety planning. .

“If the structure is designed correctly for the fire, if there are escape routes and if the smoke is evacuated correctly, it is possible to overcome the fire without loss of life.”

The Home Secretary said there were two fire escapes, but there are indications they were not of a good standard.

An official at the Turkish Union of Chambers of Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) in Bolu, Erol Percin, said the way the fire had spread suggested that fire warning, detection and extinguishing systems may not have been present. .

He said the building’s wooden exterior facade should have been 100% fire resistant, but that does not appear to be the case.

The head of the Turkish Fire Protection and Education Foundation told the BBC that the size of the fire suggested that “the fire system does not exist or was not designed according to standards.”

At that time, 238 people were staying at the Grand Kartal hotel.

Kazim Beceren said fire safety systems were designed with the goal of taking three minutes to evacuate each floor, and a facility with more than 200 people could be evacuated in 15 to 30 minutes under ideal conditions.

When an alarm sounds, the person in charge of the fire control panel is expected to check the location, according to the director of the Turkish Fire Education and Protection Foundation.

If there is no indication of a false alarm or if a second detector sends a warning, fire alarms throughout the building are typically activated.

In a properly installed system, people are directed by announcements to the nearest fire exits, with flashing lights for the hearing impaired or audible warnings for those who are sleeping.

Since fires can spread very quickly, sprinkler systems are considered very important to intervene at an early stage.

So is a backup power source. According to fire protection regulations, signs indicating emergency exits and lights indicating the way to these exits must operate for one to three hours, even in the event of a power outage.

The Bolu Engineers and Architects Union said in a statement that “an automatic sprinkler system is mandatory” in buildings of this size.

“Photographs on the hotel’s website show that the automatic sprinkler system that was supposed to be installed in 2008 was not installed. Due to this failure, the fire spread quickly and there were casualties.”

BBC Turkey has not been able to independently confirm the allegations about the building’s wood cladding or the hotel’s fire suppression system.

One of the big questions is whether the hotel’s fire systems were properly inspected.

Bolu Mayor Tanju Ozcan said the Ministry of Tourism was responsible because the hotel was beyond his city limits. Erol Percin agreed.

The mayor said that the last time the Bolu municipality gave a report indicating that the hotel was fireproof was in 2007 and since then no such checks have been carried out.

However, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, from Culture and Tourism, stated that the hotel had a fire competency certificate “issued by firefighters” and that the inspections were their responsibility.

There have also been calls for relatively old structures to come under scrutiny due to changes in legislation.

“Busy places such as hotels, residences, nursing homes or daycare centers should stop operating if they do not comply with current standards,” says Professor Atayilmaz from Yildiz Technical University.